Summary

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  • Caselist.RoundClass[20]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[21]

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EntryDate

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1		-2016-11-14 05:21:35.394
	1	+2016-11-14 05:21:35.0

Caselist.CitesClass[21]

Cites

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	1	+Text: Countries ought to increases the production of Thorium nuclear power plants. Warmflash is the solvency advocate.
	2	+Net Benefits
	3	+1. Nuclear energy saves 300 times more lives than coal or fossil fuels, even when considering accidents – turns case - Schrope 13
	4	+Schrope 13 Schrope, Mark. "Nuclear Power Prevents More Deaths Than It Causes." CEN RSS. Chemical and Engineering News, 2 Apr. 2013. Web. 09 Aug. 2016. http://cen.acs.org/articles/91/web/2013/04/Nuclear-Power-Prevents-Deaths-Causes.html.
	5	+Web Date: April 2, 2013 Nuclear Power Prevents More Deaths Than It Causes Climate Change: Study estimates that nuclear energy leads to substantially fewer pollution-related deaths and greenhouse gas emissions compared with fossil-fuel sources By Mark Schrope +Enlarge 20130402lnj1-crystalriver Nuclear Future The Crystal River nuclear power plant in Florida is scheduled for decommissioning, and there are no plans to replace it. Credit: Mark Schrope Using nuclear power in place of fossil-fuel energy sources, such as coal, has prevented some 1.8 million air pollution-related deaths globally and could save millions of more lives in coming decades, concludes a study. The researchers also find that nuclear energy prevents emissions of huge quantities of greenhouse gases. These estimates help make the case that policymakers should continue to rely on and expand nuclear power in place of fossil fuels to mitigate climate change, the authors say (Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es3051197). In the wake of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, critics of nuclear power have questioned how heavily the world should rely on the energy source, due to possible risks it poses to the environment and human health. “I was very disturbed by all the negative and in many cases unfounded hysteria regarding nuclear power after the Fukushima accident,” says report coauthor Pushker A. Kharecha, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York. Working with Goddard’s James E. Hansen, Kharecha set out to explore the benefits of nuclear power. The pair specifically wanted to look at nuclear power’s advantages over fossil fuels in terms of reducing air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Kharecha was surprised to find no broad studies on preventable deaths that could be attributed to nuclear power’s pollution savings. But he did find data from a 2007 study on the average number of deaths per unit of energy generated with fossil fuels and nuclear power (Lancet, DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(07)61253-7). These estimates include deaths related to all aspects of each energy source from mining the necessary natural resources to power generation. For example, the data took into account chronic bronchitis among coal miners and air pollution-related conditions among the public, including lung cancer. The NASA researchers combined this information with historical energy generation data to estimate how many deaths would have been caused if fossil-fuel burning was used instead of nuclear power generation from 1971 to 2009. They similarly estimated that the use of nuclear power over that time caused 5,000 or so deaths, such as cancer deaths from radiation fallout and worker accidents. Comparing those two estimates, Kharecha and Hansen came up with the 1.8 million figure. They next estimated the total number of deaths that could be prevented through nuclear power over the next four decades using available estimates of future nuclear use. Replacing all forecasted nuclear power use until 2050 with natural gas would cause an additional 420,000 deaths, whereas swapping it with coal, which produces significantly more pollution than gas, would mean about 7 million additional deaths. The study focused strictly on deaths, not long-term health issues that might shorten lives, and the authors did not attempt to estimate potential deaths tied to climate change. Finally the pair compared carbon emissions from nuclear power to fossil fuel sources. They calculated that if coal or natural gas power had replaced nuclear energy from 1971 to 2009, the equivalent of an additional 64 gigatons of carbon would have reached the atmosphere. Looking forward, switching out nuclear for coal or natural gas power would lead to the release of 80 to 240 gigatons of additional carbon by 2050.
	6	+3. Thorium power production is particularly clean – recycles itself, less waste, less accidents, and more energy more easily. - Warmflash 15
	7	+Warmflash 15 Warmflash, David. "Thorium Power Is the Safer Future of Nuclear Energy." The Crux. Discover Magazine, 16 Jan. 2015. Web. 12 Aug. 2016. http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2015/01/16/thorium-future-nuclear-energy/#.V633yvkrLIU.
	8	+Nuclear power has long been a contentious topic. It generates huge amounts of electricity with zero carbon emissions, and thus is held up as a solution to global energy woes. But it also entails several risks, including weapons development, meltdown, and the hazards of disposing of its waste products. But those risks and benefits all pertain to a very specific kind of nuclear energy: nuclear fission of uranium or plutonium isotopes. There’s another kind of nuclear energy that’s been waiting in the wings for decades – and it may just demand a recalibration of our thoughts on nuclear power. Nuclear fission using thorium is easily within our reach, and, compared with conventional nuclear energy, the risks are considerably lower. Thorium’s Story Ideas for using thorium have been around since the 1960s, and by 1973 there were proposals for serious, concerted research in the US. But that program fizzled to a halt only a few years later. Why? The answer is nuclear weapons. The 1960s and ’70s were the height of the Cold War and weaponization was the driving force for all nuclear research. Any nuclear research that did not support the US nuclear arsenal was simply not given priority. Conventional nuclear power using a fuel cycle involving uranium-235 and/or plutonium-239 was seen as killing two birds with one stone: reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil, and creating the fuel needed for nuclear bombs. Thorium power, on the other hand, didn’t have military potential. And by decreasing the need for conventional nuclear power, a potentially successful thorium program would have actually been seen as threatening to U.S. interests in the Cold War environment. Today, however, the situation is very different. Rather than wanting to make weapons, many global leaders are worried about proliferating nuclear technology. And that has led several nations to take a closer look at thorium power generation. How Thorium Reactors Work The isotope of thorium that’s being studied for power is called Th-232. Like uranium, Th-232 comes from rocks in the ground. A thorium reactor would work like this: Th-232 is placed in a reactor, where it is bombarded with a beam of neutrons. In accepting a neutron from the beam, Th-232 becomes Th-233, but this heavier isotope doesn’t last very long. The Th-233 decays to protactinium-233, which further decays into U-233. The U-233 remains in the reactor and, similar to current nuclear power plants, the fission of the uranium generates intense heat that can be converted to electricity. To keep the process going, the U-233 must be created continuously by keeping the neutron-generating accelerator turned on. By contrast the neutrons that trigger U-235 fission in a conventional reactor are generated from the fuel itself. The process continues in a chain reaction and can be controlled or stopped only by inserting rods of neutron-absorbing material into the reactor core. But these control rods aren’t foolproof: their operation can be affected during a reactor malfunction. This is the reason that a conventional fission reactor has the potential to start heating out of control and cause an accident. A thorium fuel cycle, by contrast, can be immediately shut down by turning off the supply of neutrons. Shutting down the fuel cycle means preventing the breeding of Th-232 into U-233. This doesn’t stop the heating in the reactor immediately, but it stops it from getting worse. The increased safety of thorium power does not end there. Unlike the U-235 and plutonium fuel cycles, the thorium reactors can be designed to operate in a liquid state. While a conventional reactor heading to meltdown has no way to jettison the fuel to stop the fission reactions, a thorium reactor design called LFTR features a plug at the bottom of the reactor that will melt if the temperature of the reacting fuel climbs too high. If that happens the hot liquid would all drain out and the reaction would stop. Powered Up Thorium power has other attractions, too. Its production of nuclear waste would be orders of magnitude lower than conventional nuclear power, though experts disagree about exactly how much: Chinese researchers claim it’s three orders of magnitude (a thousandth the amount of waste or less), while U.S. researchers say a hundredth the amount of waste. Thorium would be easier to obtain than uranium. While uranium mines are enclosed underground and thus very dangerous for the miners, thorium is taken from open pits, and is estimated to be roughly three times as abundant as uranium in the Earth’s crust. But perhaps the most salient benefit of thorium power, in our geopolitically dicey world, is that the fuel is much harder to turn into a bomb. Thorium itself isn’t fissile. The thorium fuel cycle does produce fissile material, U-233, which theoretically could be used in a bomb. But thorium would not be a very practical route to making a weapon, especially with LFTR technology. Not only would the proliferator have to steal the fissile U-233 as hot liquid from inside the reactor; they’d also be exposed to an extremely dangerous isotope, U-232, unless they had a robot to carry out the task. Future Fuel China has announced that its researchers will produce a fully functional thorium reactor within the next 10 years. India, with one of the largest thorium reserves on the planet but not much uranium, is also charging ahead. Indian researchers are planning to have a prototype thorium reactor operational early next year, though the reactor’s output will be only about a quarter of the output of a typical new nuclear plant in the west. Norway is currently in the midst of a four-year test of using thorium fuel rods in existing nuclear reactors. Other nations with active thorium research programs include the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Japan, and Israel.

EntryDate

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	1	+2016-11-14 05:21:37.565

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	1	+x

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ParentRound

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	1	+20

Round

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	1	+Sunset bhat Neg

Title

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	1	+SO - Thorium CP

Tournament

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	1	+x